A Cautionary Tale, Contact Forms & Email Deliverability, ChatGPT vs. Gemini
Not taking care of SEO equity equals large losses.
It’s always ‘all the things’ over time that really make a difference. I was looking at some Google Search Console results last week. Search Console is one of my favorite reporting tools – it’s all about organic activity on your website and how it’s doing in search.
We lost a customer last year after years of working on their search engine optimization. They were on an ‘all the things’ complete package of consistently looking at and improving the technical components of SEO, adding content, optimizing content, social media, email marketing, digital ads, as well as some off-line marketing. Over the course of 7 years, we had steadily and consistently seen an increase across the board for performance. Rankings went up, clicks went up, impressions went up, and conversions went up.
They went with another company to launch a new website. Their new site, aesthetically, looks very nice. But year over year results show that their organic clicks decreased by more than 100% losing nearly 800 clicks a month. Their impressions went down by 500%.
When we launch a new site, we always do an audit to make sure we don’t lose any SEO equity that has built up over time. It’s a little heart-breaking to see something like this happen. What went wrong? Why did we lose the client? I don’t know exactly. Internally, we’ve looked at what we could’ve done differently – possibly better communication. But a fact of business is that business will be gained, and it will be lost; sometimes people just get sold by someone else. I hope we get them back.
In the meantime, I have a cautionary case study. The details matter, doing ‘all the things’ has a significant impact, and sometimes there are technicalities that we may not be aware of that can make a huge difference (one way or another). Appearances matter, but they don’t tell the whole story. Make sure you look for the guy behind the curtain.
